Glossary

A Git command that is used to add a file to your working tree. The new items are added to the repository when you commit.

This is the common ancestor's version of a conflicted file.

This command is for text files only, and it annotates every line to show the repository revision in which it was last changed, and the author who made that change. Our GUI implementation is called TortoiseGitBlame and it also shows the commit date/time and the log message when you hover the mouse of the revision number.

A term frequently used in revision control systems to describe what happens when development forks at a particular point and follows 2 separate paths. You can create a branch off the main development line so as to develop a new feature without rendering the main line unstable. Or you can branch a stable release to which you make only bug fixes, while new developments take place on the unstable trunk. In Git a branch is implemented as a “pointer to a revision”.

Remove untracked files from the working tree.

This is different to TortoiseSVN cleanup

A Git command which creates a local working tree in an empty directory by downloading a remote repository.

This Git command is used to pass the changes in your local working tree back into the repository, creating a new repository revision.

When changes from the repository are merged with local changes, sometimes those changes occur on the same lines. In this case Git cannot automatically decide which version to use and the file is said to be in conflict. You have to edit the file manually and resolve the conflict before you can commit any further changes.

In a Git repository you can manually create a copy of a single file or an entire tree w/o problems.

When you delete a versioned item (and commit the change) the item no longer exists in the repository after the committed revision. But of course it still exists in earlier repository revisions, so you can still access it. If necessary, you can copy a deleted item and “resurrect” it complete with history.

Shorthand for “Show Differences”. Very useful when you want to see exactly what changes have been made.

This command produces an compressed archive of all versioned files (of a specific revision).

Group policy object

HEAD is a synonym for the currently active branch (to be more precise in Git HEAD can also be so-called "detached" and directly pointing to a commit instead of a branch).

Show the revision history of a file or folder. Also known as “Log”.

Show the revision history of a file or folder. Also known as “History”.

The process by which changes from the repository are added to your working tree without disrupting any changes you have already made locally. Sometimes these changes cannot be reconciled automatically and the working tree is said to be in conflict.

Merging happens automatically when you pull changes, cherry-pick, or rebase. You can also merge specific changes from another branch using TortoiseGit's Merge command.

If a working tree has changes to text files only, it is possible to use Git's Diff command to generate a single file summary of those changes in Unified Diff format. A file of this type is often referred to as a “Patch”, and it can be emailed to someone else (or to a mailing list) and applied to another working tree. Someone without commit access can make changes and submit a patch file for an authorized committer to apply. Or if you are unsure about a change you can submit a patch for others to review.

This Git command pulls down the latest changes from the repository into your working tree, merging any changes made by others with local changes in the working tree.

A repository is a place where data is stored and maintained. A repository can be a place where multiple databases or files are located for distribution over a network, or a repository can be a location that is directly accessible to the user without having to travel across a network. Git is a distributed version control system - each working tree contains its own repository (in the .git folder). A Git repository does not require network to work with most operations. Network is required only when you need to synchronize changes with remote repositories.

When files in a working tree are left in a conflicted state following a merge, those conflicts must be sorted out by a human using an editor (or perhaps TortoiseGitMerge). This process is referred to as “Resolving Conflicts”. When this is complete you can mark the conflicted files as being resolved, which allows them to be committed.

If you have made changes and decide you want to undo them, you can use the “revert” command to go back to the version from HEAD.

Every time you commit a set of changes, you create one new “revision” in the repository. Each revision represents the state of the repository tree at a certain point in its history. If you want to go back in time you can examine the repository as it was at a specific revision.

In another sense, a revision can refer to the set of changes that were made when that revision was created.

A frequently-used abbreviation for Subversion.

TortoiseGit provides git-svn interoperability. You can fetch partial or whole history from an SVN remote and store as a local git repository. This allows you to browse the history and create commits locally. You can finally commit your changes to an SVN remote.

Updates all files in the working tree to a specific version. This is normally used for switching/checking out branches.

The corresponding command for the SVN update command is Pull.

See “Working Tree”.

This is your local “sandbox”, the area where you work on the versioned files, and it normally resides on your local hard disk. You create a working tree by doing a “Clone” of a repository, and you feed your changes back into the repository using “Commit”.